With The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), New Zealand genre film maverick Peter Jackson does the impossible: he makes a faithful, magical, thrilling, and—most importantly—compelling film version of J.R.R. Tolkein’s great cult fantasy epic. Streamlining the complex story and wealth of detail from the novel, Jackson manages to introduce a […]
Buried under kerchief, blousy shirt, and the make-up of a heavy metal fashion victim, Johnny Depp bobs and weaves his way through the hit pirate trilogy as Jack Sparrow, a black pirate come high seas con man with a heart of tarnished stolen gold. He seems to have stumbled in from his own private movie […]
For a couple of decades now, many (if not most) indie filmmakers have sustained themselves between movies by directing episodic TV, notably cable shows. With the addition of streaming and the advent of peak TV, however, indie filmmakers have increasingly been courted to develop their own shows. Joe Swanberg, the astounding prolific godfather of the […]
Buried under kerchief, blousy shirt, and the make-up of a heavy metal fashion victim, Johnny Depp bobs and weaves his way through Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) as Jack Sparrow, a black pirate made over as a lovable rogue. Less Douglas Fairbanks than an aquatic Artful Dodger gone to […]
